Auswanderer Quatsch

Hey, I just realized I did not talk to you about Halting State and Accelerando two science fiction books written by Charles Stross (and suggested by Greg – again) that I read before getting along with the Zombies in World War Z.

Halting State

The story takes place in a very near future, where online gaming becomes an institution as well as a marketplace in itself. “Hayek Associates”, one of the multiple companies taking care of balancing the economy of a virtual world is robbed… or should I say its ingame virtual bank is raided by a group of orcs virtually stealing millions in goods and epic items. But due to the interconnection of the virtual worlds and the importance of a stable economy there, it is the stock exchange rate of the company “in real life” that is at stake here ; the investigation can begin.

The pitch is actually pretty good, the characters are interesting, the mix between real and virtual is puzzling at first but soon very enjoyable. There are a couple very cool concepts in there like an online game used by the “government” to perform spying tasks and training spies etc. Unfortunately, the plot looses itself pretty soon in some crazy international terrorist crap with big guns which removes all taste to this – at first – wonderful setup.

Well, you got it, even if there are some funny concepts in there, I don’t recommand it.

Accelerando

This book is almost as strange as it is complex and exciting. The story starts just before the singularity (mum: that’s the time when machine’s complexity will start to grow too fast for us humans to follow ;] ), following the life of Manfred Macx, a genius VentureAltruist (I love the concept, a guy giving away his ideas for the sake of increasing his online reputation and living from what the people he helped earn billions will kindly give him in return), and his “dysfunctional family”. With the singularity, comes the virtualization of the mind and the unlimited lifespan that goes with it… I let you imagine what it does to a 3 generation family that now have to coexist virtually forever although they just cannot stand each other >_<

If the story itself is not that fresh, the concepts explosed are plain fantastic. The virtualisation, upload of the mind and “virtual worlds” to run them, the economical concepts pushed to their extreme… it is really plain fantastic.

The story was first published as a serie of novels in the “Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine” and later reunited in a whole book. That’s why the jumps between the chapters are sometime a bit hard to follow but that’s also why the chapters themselves are often small self-sufficient stories, which is really appreciable.

What can I say? I really had a lot of fun reading this book and I really recommand it to any crazy mind like mine (but if you are not sure of your english, go for a translation as it ic COMPLICATED!).

After trying (and failing) to read “Gardens of the Moon” from Steven Erikson (too much magic for me there, I like my medieval-fantastic more medieval and less fantastic), I decided to invest my fast decreasing reading time into Sci-Fi again.

Zombie_Woman by WVS

This time I went for a zombie story – “an oral history of the zombie war” to be precise – that was recommended by a former colleague of mine and read it cover-to-cover in the train and plane during my trip to Slovakia this week : World War Z from Max Brooks.

Zombies are always fun, probably because they are pretty unrealistic, they defy all the laws of physics and ironically give us a sure alternative to death… what we actually fear most! But writing about zombies is not an easy task for it is way too easy to produce a cheesy story full of crap and seen a million times already ; but this one isn’t.

What really interested me at first – and what is in my opinion one of the strongest faces of the book – is the construction of the novel as a journalist interview of the survivors. Since it is supposed to be recorded after the war, all the persons talking survived it somehow… and what they are explaining will somehow end “well”… at least for them. This simple construction trick removes a whole suspense part of the book, focusing the story on the succession of events on the global scale and less on the survival – which is the usual zombie subject.

Of course you get a lot of run-aways, of trapped people, fighting scenes, bloody massacres, dismembering and flesh-orgy scenes… but the central point of the book is to show how the plague started, how it gained the whole Earth, how it was fought and how humanity managed to survive it, not to make you like a character and make you fear for his life as he runs away from the living dead trying to save his dumb-trapped-princess at the same time.

Talking about the characters, each chapter is actually the narration of a different person. From a secret Israeli agent, a GI and high ranked military officer to a Japanese nerd, a gardener and “simple” parents you get a really interesting picture of the global situation.

Yes, I really enjoyed this book and I warmly recommend it, specially if you need a break after a medieval fantastic streak that was too strong on the fantastic

(Picture – splendid – by WVS whose DailyDoseOfImagery I strongly recommend as well)

It’s been a while since I wrote something about a book here. Well, that’s partially because I had less time to write but also because the books I read were not that good that they required/deserved a post right away.

But some where good anyway and Fatherland from Robert Harris is definitely one of them.

The context of the story – in the form of an alternative history – is very disturbing. Germany won the Second World War on the European side of the Atlantic and Hitler is confortably installed at the head of the 3rd Reich while former leaders of the Nazi-Party are dispatched in all the governing seats. The SS are integrated in the whole society and the Gestapo is still the most powerful / dreaded tool of the State. You really have to imagine the 3rd Reich as a part of the Modern World, world at peace with the USA led by a J.P. Kennedy for example. You can get why that may be disturbing right?

The story begins in spring 1964, a few weeks before Hitler’s 75th birthday, with a mere murder and an almost banal investigation from the Kripo, the Kriminalpolizei. No information about the victim, not even a name or a matching missing-person profile, nothing. That sounds strange to detective Xavier March, moreover when he discovers that the victim is a high-ranking Nazi representative and when the Gestapo starts taking over and rushing into closing the case. Of course Xavier does not give up and ends up being trapped into a dangerous political scandal.

This book is really interesting for many reasons, the first one being the uncover of the “final solution”. There is a huge enphasis about the jews being “replaced further east” but no one dares thinking let aside talking about a “final solution”. I know I spoil a bit there, but this is the subject that Xavier is going to uncover and tackle during the whole story. As surreal as it is, this subject is still one of the most complicated questions that the younger generations are and will keep asking. Maybe it is also a question I would somehow like to ask around but I did not dare…

The second reason would be the relations between Xavier and the SS-Corp. (he himself is a SS-Major) and Xavier and his son. Xavier March came in the SS when the Police was merged inside the organisation, not the otherway. His relation with the Uniform is somehow twisted and he loathes the Corp. but stays in as it is the only way for him to continue inquiring as a detective as well as not wishing to give up the modest advantages of being a SS-Officer. But during the whole story, R.Harris deeply describes the way other people look at Xavier with and without his uniform and let transpire the mixed feelings of his character. On the other hand, there has been a lot of talking about the Hitler Youth in our history, but try to imagine how it would be in a 30 yrs old Nazi Regime… Xavier’s son – Pili – is a pure Nazi product and neither his father or Philip himself can do anything about it. This leads to a disgusting – at best – relation as well as horrible scenes that reminded me of (pardon my sources) the film “Equilibrium”.

Anyway, beside triggering curious stares in the bus (Swastika on the cover) it was a really interesting book to digest and think about; I really recommend it.

The Cryptonomicon from Neal Stephenson is a book that took me a really long time to go through. Not that it was not interesting, oh no! I read it slowly because this is a heavy 1000 pages condensed piece of science with more details than the panorama picture of Paris I currently have as a Windows background.

The story takes place in two different time frames with related characters.

1. The first part follows the actions of Bobby Shaftoe and Lawrence Waterhouse both soldiers, respectively a US Marines and a US Navy Cryptographer, as they fight their way through the Second World War. Lawrence is a first class code breaker working directly with (among others) Allan Turing, the inventor of the “Turing Machine”. But he is also responsible for analyzing Allies actions and organizing “dummy/cover operations” in order to try to hide the fact that the Allies have broken German and Japaneese cryptographic codes. Bobby Shaftoe is part of the team used for those cover operations which will drive him all around the globe and specially in Asia where most of the story takes place.
2. The second part takes place nowadays as Randy Waterhouse (grandson of Lawrence and a modern computer scientist) and Avi Halaby build a new company. The company, named Epiphyte(2), operates in both cryptography and Internet and rapidly becomes the center of a financial/political shareholder battle. Both partners are later joined by Doug and Amy Shaftoe (son and granddaughter of Bobby) as the “old and new” storylines begin to merge.

I cannot tell you much more than this without risking spoiling some key elements. I found the science part of the book  being the most interesting one. Everything is plausible if not mathematically proven in the book, no special technology appearing “to serve the story”,  no shortcuts used to hide a weak technical point…  this is true mental masturbation material for a scientific mind like mine >_<. The modern story, even if not as interesting as the old one “at first”, ends up being really exciting when we finally understand how the first storyline serves the second one.

Unfortunately, switching from one chapter to another is a real mess. It’s not unusual to wait a couple page before being certain of which storyline it belongs to…  which is kind of annoying. A simple date with the chapter title would have been enough to help the reader feel at home. This is mostly true at the beginning where the names are still a mess in one’s head and when new characters are constantly popping up.

Nothing more to say: overall this was a great book that I really recommend… to scientific minds :]

(Img Griffey on Flickr)

Malgré que la moitié de mes trajets quotidiens se fassent maintenant en vélo je continue à lire avec avidité. J’ai récemment fini Ender’s Shadow, une des suites d’Ender’s Game que j’avais beaucoup apprécié.

Ender’s Game raconte l’histoire d’Ender, un enfant arraché à sa famille et envoyé dans une “Battle School” située en orbite de la Terre pour y apprendre le commandement militaire. Ender’s Shadow à ceci de spécial qu’il raconte exactement la même histoire mais depuis un autre point de vue. On suit ici non pas Ender, mais Bean, son principal “lieutenant”.

Si vous n’avez pas lu Ender’s Game et que vous comptez le lire, je vous conseille de passer votre chemin (et de revenir plus tard ) car certains éléments cruciaux pour le suspense sont dévoilés ci-dessous.

J’ai tellement aimé Ender’s Game que je n’aurais pas supporté que cette “suite” soit ratée. Les deux livres parlant de la même histoire, qui plus est dans un univers aussi fermé que la Battle School… j’avais deux grosses interrogations en commençant la lecture:

• Vu la place (plus-que) centrale qu’occupe Ender dans l’histoire, comment donner un véritable intérêt à l’histoire de Bean?
• Une grosse partie de l’histoire étant basée sur le coup de théâtre final, comment faire pour que l’histoire conserve un brin de suspense alors que l’on connait déjà la fin?

Finalement ces deux points ont été résolu de manière brillante par l’auteur, Orson Scott Card, dans sa création même du personnage de Bean.

Il fait de Bean un garçon à l’intelligence telle que ce dernier soit capable de comprendre immédiatement les situations dans lesquelles il est placé. A peine dans la Battle School, Bean saisit donc qu’il y a un truc louche et que le seul moyen de battre les “Buggers” est en fait de porter la guerre chez eux. Et même s’il n’a aucun moyen d’en être certain et qu’il se méprend sur le rôle de la Battle School, il saisit tout de suite que l’armada humaine doit être en route pour le monde des Buggers en ce moment même.

En créant Bean ainsi, O.S.C. résout en fait les deux problèmes simultanément. Comme Bean a une idée de la fin du film dès le début, ça ne dérange pas l’auteur que le lecteur sache également à l’avance comment cela va se terminer. Et si la finalité n’est plus le problème, c’est donc que tout l’intérêt du livre repose sur le chemin permettant d’y arriver. Bingo, O.S.C. construit Bean de manière tellement complexe, avec une personnalité tellement étriquée, que chaque nouvelle situation est un véritable défit interieur digne d’intérêt.

De plus, l’histoire porte vraiment bien son nom. Ender’s Shadow lève le voile sur le travail que Bean a en fait réalisé dans l’ombre du “Commander” et dont on entend jamais parler dans le premier opus. Car voila bien tout l’intérêt du livre, si Ender est le personnage principal de toute l’histoire, Bean hérite d’un rôle aussi grand mais plus complexe en tant qu’homme de l’ombre.

Ce livre est simplement excellent. Ender’s Game était fabuleux depart sa construction et sa résolution, Ender’s Shadow est excellent depart l’évolution de son personnage principal. Si vous avez aimé Ender’s Game vous ne serez pas décu avec cette suite! Et si vous ne l’avez pas lu… il est encore temps de le faire