I have known about this story since high school but I had never read it. There were no big surprises here for me because of that but it was not as poiI have known about this story since high school but I had never read it. There were no big surprises here for me because of that but it was not as poignant as I thought it was going to be. Charlie is mostly angry when he reaches his raised potential and he stops being the nice guy that he was before the surgery. I understand his anger but I found I wasn't rooting for him as much. He is totally justified for his stance about how people on the spectrum or suffer from retardation seem invisible to "normal" people. But he never reached a state in his enlightenment where he totally forgave his family, his friends, and his co-workers. I am not saying he had to but it made him less likeable. I guess I kept comparing this story to one of my favorite movies: Phenomenon with John Travolta in the lead. Travolta stays nice throughout the movie and when the end comes, it rips your heart out. The one perspective that I got out of the story though was idea that IQ is not a measure of intelligence. It is a measure of potential intelligence. You still have to fill up the vessel with knowledge. I never thought about it like that before.
Merged review:
I have known about this story since high school but I had never read it. There were no big surprises here for me because of that but it was not as poignant as I thought it was going to be. Charlie is mostly angry when he reaches his raised potential and he stops being the nice guy that he was before the surgery. I understand his anger but I found I wasn't rooting for him as much. He is totally justified for his stance about how people on the spectrum or suffer from retardation seem invisible to "normal" people. But he never reached a state in his enlightenment where he totally forgave his family, his friends, and his co-workers. I am not saying he had to but it made him less likeable. I guess I kept comparing this story to one of my favorite movies: Phenomenon with John Travolta in the lead. Travolta stays nice throughout the movie and when the end comes, it rips your heart out. The one perspective that I got out of the story though was idea that IQ is not a measure of intelligence. It is a measure of potential intelligence. You still have to fill up the vessel with knowledge. I never thought about it like that before....more
Recommended for Andy Weir fans Recommended for Fans of "The Martian"
I became a fan of Andy Weir's in that period between when he published the "The MarRecommended for Andy Weir fans Recommended for Fans of "The Martian"
I became a fan of Andy Weir's in that period between when he published the "The Martian" and before Hollywood made the movie. So, I was curious about what he would do with his second outing. I would put this book (2017), "The Martian (2011)," and another, "Project Hail Mary (2021)" in the generalized genre of Michael Crichton's near future science possibility; science fiction novels that are known for their scientific accuracy and their ability to blend fiction with non-fiction.
The book is set on “Artemis,” a five-dome moonbase, servicing industry and tourism in the late 2080s. It follows the life of porter and smuggler Jasmine "Jazz" Bashara as she gets caught up in a conspiracy for control of the city. It's a thriller with chase scenes and Rube Goldberg heist operations set against how difficult all that is on the moon.
It started off well. The first half of the book is entertaining and fast-moving. One of the opening scenes even felt like horror a la the first Alien It started off well. The first half of the book is entertaining and fast-moving. One of the opening scenes even felt like horror a la the first Alien movie. In fact, there is a lot of cribbing going on here, from Dune, to Firefly, to Spiderman's Venom and to "Night of the Living Dead." And speaking of Firefly, I really liked the Serenity-esque crew. That said, halfway through the book, I realized I had half of the book to go and I just didn't care that much about how it ended. I finished it because, you know, I couldn't stop half way through. But the second half just wasn't as much fun. It wasn't a bad book by any means. The author successfully juggles a boatload of characters, technology and plot points, so I liked it. It started off with a bang with me sprinting out of the blocks. But, by the end, I had to drag myself across the finish line....more
** Wasn’t great, had some good pieces. : Recommended for Tom Clancy and Michael Creighton fans : Recommended for readers interested in the in-between ti
** Wasn’t great, had some good pieces. : Recommended for Tom Clancy and Michael Creighton fans : Recommended for readers interested in the in-between time of artificial intelligence development today and whenever Skylab wakes up and kills us all. : Recommended for techies interested to see what might be in our near future.
I totally appreciate what Singer and Cole were trying to do. From the same well that Town Clancy and Michael Creighton pulled from, Singer and Cole project out 20 years in terms of technology evolution and social change and try to write a story that is compelling enough that the readers don’t feel like they are being lectured to. They succeed on explaining the tech but just miss on the story.
: Artificial Intelligence (AI) : Almost sentient robots : Drones (Flying robots) : Self-driving car (Robots on wheels) : AI Cops (Robots with a badge) : Augmented intelligence (quite interesting) : quantum encryption: algorithms that detect any attempt to secretly monitor the conversation because it would change the quantum state. : nanotechnology : automation and visualization.
The narrator, Mia Barron, was serviceable. She didn’t stand out in any way but she wasn’t bad.
This quote from Goodreads reviewer Ryan sums it up nicely: "Reads like a power-point review, intended for Marine Corps Captains , that has been fleshed out to book length form.”
And another from Jerry Lenaburg from the New York journal of books.
"The novel reads like an eccentric amalgam of Neuromancer and the Hunger Games, blending a great deal of detail on emerging technologies that is at times downright scary, with a tale of humanity struggling to come to terms with an unknown future."
Sources
"Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution,” by P.W. Singer & August Cole, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 26 May 2020.
"Details Matter: "Burn-In" Book Review,” By Wes O’Donnell, In Military.
"Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution,” by Jerry Lenaburg, New York journal of books.
"A Review of Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution,” By Reid Barbier, American University, 10 June 2020. ...more
***** Recommend it ; this is my second time through it.
The first time I read “Dune” was in the early 1980s. Both my wife and I read it at the same tim***** Recommend it ; this is my second time through it.
The first time I read “Dune” was in the early 1980s. Both my wife and I read it at the same time. I liked it more than she did but then, I am the nerd in the family. To me, it felt like a straight up science fiction adventure and I loved the good guys in the House Atreides. Paul’s Dad, Leto, was a classic leader of men like Aragorn from the Lord of the Rings. Gurney Halleck and Duncan Idaho were the archetypal right hand men like Little John and Will Scarlet in Robin Hood. And Lady Jessica, I think, was the first fictional female character that I had encountered who was much more than window dressing and the love interest. Fabulous.
It wan’t until I just re-read it that I realized where the author, Frank Herbert, got some of his ideas and how much influence this book had on future science fiction and fantasy. You can draw a straight line from Lawrence of Arabia (1962) to Dune (1965), to Star Wars (1977) to Game fo Thrones (2011.) It is dense though and the prose is not the easiest to negotiate. Listening to it as an Audible Book really helped.
This time through though, I understand what a Mentat is, basically a human Monte Carlo simulation engine because computers had been outlawed by the galactic empire.
This time, my son and I read it together. Our only nitpick was the ending. Instead of a big world-ending battle, all the characters get together in a tent and talk each other to death. Paul eventually goes mano y mano in a macho fight to the death, that he didn’t have to do, with a small character that we the audience barely knew.
But that is a small nitpick. With Spice Worms, Freeman, man-made climate change, layers of treachery, religion, politics, and let’s not forget multiple love stories, it is no wonder that it tied for the Hugo Award in 1966 and won the inaugural Nebula Award. ...more
Book Review: SCI-PHI: SCIENCE FICTION AS PHILOSOPHY
**** Recommend it : Highly Recommend if you are a sci-phi fan and interested in expanding your underBook Review: SCI-PHI: SCIENCE FICTION AS PHILOSOPHY
**** Recommend it : Highly Recommend if you are a sci-phi fan and interested in expanding your understanding of philosophy.
:Recommend if you are a sci-phi fan.
In "Science Fiction as Philosophy,” Professor Johnson has hit on a brilliant way to introduce students to some of the biggest ideas, old and young, around philosophy: take popular science fiction movies, TV shows, and related books and discuss the underlying philosophical ideas that were the basis of the story.
I am a fan of the “The Gear Courses” project. Essentially, prominent university professors convert their favorite courses into an acoustic format similar to an audio book. If there is a subject you want to learn about, there is probably a great courses version of it. I have listened to two over the last five years. I know that doesn’t sound like a I am a huge fan with only two in five years under my belt, but these are college courses. You can listen to them like an audio book if you want, but I prefer to study them. And I highly recommend "Espionage and Covert Operations: A Global History” by Professor Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius.
I am also fascinated by the evolution of presented material, either fiction or non-fiction, that has been traditionally relegated to printed books or magazines or commercial radio. Over the last couple of years, I have noticed that there is something for everyone these days ranging from two guys and a dog sitting around a mic and talking off the cuff to highly produced audio books to these great courses:
: Traditional Podcasts (Two people and a Mic ... talking) like "Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend,” “Pop Culture Happy Hour,” and “WTF." : News Podcasts like "The Daily" and "The Big Idea" : Produced Podcasts (Higher production Value) like "Radio Lab,” “Revisionist History,” and “On the Media.” : Topic Podcasts like "Moonrise,” “Serial,” and “The Constitution." : Audio Books (Narrator reads the book) like “Sapiens,” “The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O,” and “Washington’s Crossing." : Audio Books with actors performing the characters like the "Harry Potter" series, “The Giver of Stars,” and “the Dark Tower” series. : Audio Books Produced in the same way as high produced podcasts like “Talking to Strangers." : Great Courses like "Espionage and Covert Operations” and "Sci-Phi: Science Fiction as Philosophy.”
From listening to this course, it is clear that Professor Johnson is a Sci-Phi geek and I mean that in a positive way. He loves these properties as the simple pop entertainment that they are. He includes many of my favorites like "The Matrix," "Star Trek," "Star Wars," and “Firefly." He also discusses many others that I had either not watched before or that I didn’t like that much on first viewing because I didn’t really understand them. Properties like “Contact," "Starship Troopers," “Snowpiercer," and others make the list that Professor Johnson explains and enriches.
He enriches them because he explains some of the ideas behind what the content creators were wrestling with when they worked on the project. To do that, Johnson rolls out some of the old-timer philosophers - like Descartes, Plato, and Aristotle— and some of the more recent — like Gould, Chomsky, and Einstein — and even many that I have never heard before — Bostrom, Bentham, Bickerton, and Diderot. He explains big ideas that I have heard of but never took the time for a deep dive like The Simulacra, Free Will, Determinism, NOMA, Time Travel, Parallel Universes, Bicameralism, The Panopticon, and Just War, just to name a few.
If you are a Sci-Phi buff, listening to this course is a great way to experience sci-phi from a different angle.
I am a superhero person from way back but this one is just not my cup of tea. The premise is interesting but the author takes too long getting to the I am a superhero person from way back but this one is just not my cup of tea. The premise is interesting but the author takes too long getting to the superhero part; too much "hostage girl" sub-plot. And then there is just too much soap opera about "does he like me or doesn't he?"
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