George F. JewsburyReviews

Saddam, guerra nel golfo

(1994)I tried, I really did but this story just fell off of the tracks. Good premise: Governor of Colorado is contemplating running for President then has a massive stroke. There is technology available to erase the effects of the stroke while not curing it and it is brouht to bear so that he can run. But the story goes off on different tangents. I quit after 300 pages of this 618 page book.(PW) There's no way William A. Cozzano can lose the upcoming presidential election. He's a likable midwestern governor with one insidious advantage¥an advantage provided by a shadowy group of backers. A biochip implanted in his head hardwires him to a computerized polling system. The mood of the electorate is channeled directly into his brain. Forget issues. Forget policy. Cozzano is more than the perfect candidate. He's a special effect.?Complex, entertaining, frequently funny."Â¥Publishers Weekly?Qualifies as the sleeper of the year, the rare kind of science-fiction thriller that evokes genuine laughter while simultaneously keeping the level of suspense cranked to the max."Â¥ San Diego Union-Tribune?A Manchurian Candidate for the computer age.? Â¥Seattle Weekly

Bizarre characters in an almost Philip-K-Dick-ian plot about a presidential candidate who, after suffering an incapacitating stroke, makes a Faustian bargain with a hi-tech campaign consultant who can restore the candidate but at the price of his autonomy. The candidate soon finds that the restorative brain surgery he has undergone has left his mind at the mercy of the consultant who now forces the candidate to say what the consultant wants him to say. Naturally, the consultant has thoroughly focus-grouped everything the candidate is to say. The evil of it all is not that the consultant imposes his own thoughts or ambitions so much as that he makes the candidate say what "people" want to hear according to the consultant's research.

To say this was an unexpected experience would be an understatement. Stephenson and his colleague put together a story far ahead of its time (1995) filled with extraordinary characters, concepts and plot twists. Given the current dynamic of today's presidential craziness, it raises the question: Is it possible Trump has an implant? Of course not, but the concept of being electronically controlled by groups financed by the billionaire boys club isn't far reaching. The last few chapters get the heart rate up and move at lighting pace similar to a Baldacci or Brown book. I can't recommend this book enough, especially with the current political climate!

I thought this was very entertaining all the way, although not suspenseful - but that's not surprising for this author. However, it was less technical than many of his books, so that normally puts you off, don't let it in this case, although it is slightly technical. But I thought there were some truly interesting characters, with a lot of humor throughout. Unfortunately, the most interesting character was one of the bad guys. I liked him and wasn't sure whether he was a good guy or a bad guy until the end; actually, I'm still not really sure he was such a bad guy.

Some might think the premise isn't likely or believable, but I would answer with "Are you sure?" I think perhaps the Trump fake news and misinformation coming from Washington might make this a lot more likely. Fake news rules in this story, although it was written long before the recent elections. But likely or not, it's a fun read. For those complaining that it's not on par with other Neal Stephenson books, I say "so what" and "who says?"

I read Stephenson's "Quicksilver" w/in the last yr & was very impressed. His fictionialized acct incorporating real historical characters (many of them likely to be known only to scholars) was thoroughly worked out. It was over 900pp long & took me at least a mnth to read. Now I've just read his collaborative political/medical thriller cowritten w/ J. Frederick George & I'm less impressed. While "Quicksilver" might've been somewhat comparable to something by John Barth &/or Robert Anton Wilson, "Interface" is more comparable to Michael Crichton &/or Robin Cook. In other words, while it's carefully written & well-worked-out, it still reeks of writing aimed at a market rather than something written to develop original ideas.

Take, eg, the title: There's already a SF bk by Mark Adlard called "Interface" from 1971. Not that that's such a big deal, the word's used in a significantly different way in each bk, but it immediately makes me think of mainstream cinema's seemingly endless remake mentality. An ad blurb on the front of the bk calls this most recent "Interface" "A Manchurian Candidate for the computer age" & that's entirely too true for it to be a compliment from my perspective insofar as the plot isn't really that original.

Even the multi-culturalism of the bk seems forced: just about every character is a representative of a different ethnic group. Nonetheless, I'm thankful that the politics aren't as numbnuts as Chrichton's "State of Fear" even if they are more than a bit improbable: a black woman who'd attained prosperity as a banker married to an engineer experiences an economic downslide & other miseries: she & her husband end up in a trailer park, he commits suicide, her son gets shot, she teeters around bag-lady-ism, she criticizes a racist politician in public, the politician's career gets ruined as a result, she gets launched on a political career on her own b/c people are so impressed by her articulateness, & becomes, what else?, the 1st black woman president. Well.. I'd like to see it happen, so I enjoyed the story, so.. whatever.

Anyway, it's 616 pages long so, as usual, any capsule critique is going to be grossly oversimplifying - as this one is. I read it quickly b/c I was sucked into it as I might be by any well-written thriller &, yet, wd I recommend it? Not really - there're so many truly great bks out there to be read: Read McCoy's "The Politics of Heroin" or Joyce's "Ullyses" if you haven't already - & skip this one.

The subject matter is interesting and there are so many parallels to the current political environment and technology... however... it's long winded and boring.

Abandoned for now, but I'm sure I'll come back to it. Right now I just cannot get into it.

The story of using emotional profiles of the American people to elect the president. It relies on clever technology that gives instantaneous feedback on people's responses and allows it too be used to stimulate the candidates mind. The characters are well drawn. There are several unexpected twists.
There was a similar story written on the sixties that primed a candidate with selective data from each electoral district as he campaigned there. I don't recall three end of that book.
Interface was published at the dawn of the she of public Access to the internet. Smartphones were barely imagined.
Stephenson wrote the book with his uncle. They created a thought provoking book. The didn't imagined the 2020 invasion of the capital.

Published in 2005, this story of political intrigue was prophetic. The candidate's brain is "improved" after a stroke with an implant. A very powerful secretive society is invited to take control.

The other collaboration between these two authors, Cobweb, was a thriller with a message: the US government doesn't work anymore. "Ordinary" folks are the only people who get things done, usually despite the government.

Interface is also a thriller with a message: Elections don't work anymore, either. This is because of television. It takes a similar technical and stylistic approach; "ordinary" folks turn out to be really important, humour that people will recognise from Stephenson's solo novels, though less extreme or outlandish, perhaps. Unfortunately it also shares some of the weaknesses of those giant later works, e.g. too many characters, lack of urgency or narrative drive and, crucially, not much tension until exceedingly near the end. This is disappointing, since Cobweb evades most of these problems and delivers a tense final act. Even more disappointing, in that Zodiac demonstrates that at one time Stephenson could write taught, exciting fiction as well as make a point, without help from anybody else - but we're not likely to see another book from him that is less than 400p long, are we? And I just can't be bothered with another of his 1000p tomes.

Reading this book is a healthy reminder of how such manipulation is conducted, on a practical level but readers are not offered much by way of a solution to the problems of media manipulation of/by politicians in this book. I offer one idea as a way of mitigating the problem to some limited extent: don't watch TV news, ever. Listen to talk radio news, instead - by which I mean the BBC or (second best) NPR.

An under-estimated Iowan deputy Sherrif, a Vakhan Turk terrorist and a junior CIA analyst attempt to save the world from botulism in this heavily satirical thriller. Stephenson's usual jaunts into expositional territory are kept to a minimum and are always relevant which makes this much more taut than most of his work and allows for a tense ending. Only Zodiac is leaner and faster paced, I suspect.

The most alarming aspect of the book is that the way that the government of the USA, the CIA, FBI, Universities and local Sherrif's departments are portrayed as operating is completely convincing and not in the least over-the-top.

Espectacular novela. Un político, candidato a la presidencia de los EE.UU., sufre un accidente cerebrovascular, digámoslo así, y comienza a recibir una avanzadísima terapia cerebral que irá mucho más allá de lo esperable. Además de la ciencia de la novela, los diálogos y los personajes me parecieron muy bien construidos, muy naturales. Hasta las partes de transición de la novela son interesantes. Apasionante.

Slowly but surely Neal Stephenson is creeping up my favourite author list. He has a eclectic genre list that he writes, from modern thriller, cyber books to fantasy.

Cobweb is set in the time of the first Gulf War, when Iraq have invaded Kuwait. In small town America a body of an Arab student turns up following a boating accident; but this student has been consuming alcohol. The local deputy sheriff suspects something fishy and starts to dig around the local university where the student was from.

In the meantime a low level CIA analyst is starting to get wind of an Iraqi plot happening on American soil. As she is CIA she cannot investigate, but she become the centre of a power play between two powerful men close to the president. One had been a supporter of Saddam, and is hastily re-aligning his loyalties; the other is a big chief in the CIA who also suspects that the Iraqis are up to something, but he is restricted in his capacity to deal with it. Lots of digging by the two main characters start to make them suspect that there is a potentially deadly biochemical plant in operation, and the body count starts to climb. Cue the big showdown.

Really enjoyed this in the end. It took a while to get going, but made up for it in the end. Stephenson manages to convey the vested interests in high placed officials well, the cobweb being the way that they stifle each other with officialdom.

Political near future sci-fi thriller. Media operator Cy Ogle takes political polling to a new level, using continuous tracking of people's emotions to fine-tune political messages. Add to that the ability to control the messenger (the politician), and he has a powerful mix to serve the interests of the Network. Cory Doctorow's repeated endorsements were what drew me to the book in the first place. Doctorow saw the part about the politician Earl Strong as the prediction of the rise of Donald Trump. I am not so sure, Earl Strong is a minor character in the book, and, unlike Trump, is undone quite quickly in his political ambitions. We could certainly use some real life Eleanor Richmonds, however I doubt that she would have been enough to stop Trump. I liked the book, but would not go so far as Doctorow in calling it a "masterpiece".

Modern day Manchurin Candidate.½

Read years ago, loaned my copy out which I never got back; found a second hand copy an re-read.
This is a story of politics, polling, popluraity mixed with high tech bio-engineering. I was more impressed first time around as it was pretty new to me ~10 years ago. Still a good story but the passage of time makes it seem less like fiction.½

I believe this was the only novel by Neal Stephenson that I hadn't read, so, in the interest of completism, of course I had to read it.
Sadly, I have to admit, it wasn't that good.
Being dated was part of it - it's a political thriller, and well, we know know more about Saddam and his alleged WMDs than Stephenson did when he wrote it.
Stephenson's main point here is: Foreign grad students in the sciences could actually be plants working for enemy governments, using our labs and resources to create bioweapons right here on US ground.
Discovering this plot is a small-town Iowa Good Cop, who (in an interesting twist) becomes friends with a Turkish militant, and seeks to foil the Iraqis.
From the other side of things, a low-level CIA analyst who's a Good Mormon Girl also uncovers evidence of shady goings on - and for her efforts, nearly loses her job and any hope of a career.
Unfortunately, all the governmental higher-ups are too busy worrying about politics to get things done...
The characterizations in the story are really fun (love the drunken Russian pilots) - but there were too many cliches and too much random paranoia. The other novel published under this pseudonym (Interface) was better.

You can tell it's Stephenson, as it deals with some of his main concerns, but you can also tell it's early Stephenson. Not as smooth, sleek or brainy as Snow Crash (which actually predates this book, I believe) or The Diamond Age, but a fun, thought-provoking read.

The president has just announced that he wants to default on the nation's enormous debt, so a huge secret financial syndicate implants a brain control device in a presidential candidate to make sure he wins. Except trying to describe the plot of this book really doesn't do it justice, because it explores a lot of themes - the power of the media to interfere in politics, the power of money, the implications of technology that can work wonders to heal damaged brains... this is part political thriller, part sci-fi, and part satire. The characters are engaging and fun, the story is interesting and thought-provoking in a non-intellectually-taxing mind-candy sort of way, the writing is excellent. This is an all-around entertaining and fun book.

Solid thriller, set during the first Iraq War.

Ok, you got me. Red-handed. I surrender. I admit it. I am one of the foreign students that the authors are talking about, who came into this country on the merit of just my brains, who went through the grist mill of a post-graduate program, who found a job below my qualifications, worked at it until something better came along. Yes, all true. And the wonderful thing that happened along the way was ...

... the melting pot, where:
cultures change, society adopts, people transform, foreign to local to native! What does all this have to do with the book, you ask? Well, that. The writers do great, ignoring the above. And i mean it, too. Excellent detail and character development. A slow burn intensity towards the climax. Good stuff.

Good stuff--holds up surprisingly well after ~15 years. Especially appropriate now with the election.
However, I got halfway through and realized I'd already read it. I have no idea when.

Thought this was extremely well-written, wonderfully cynical and a rattling good story too. So far, I've definitely preferred the books that Stephenson co-writes with J. Frederick George over those just written by Stephenson on his own. Finished this one in about 24 hours.

I loved this book and am surprised that it hasn't been made into a movie yet. It's a well-written, gripping combination of media manipulation, abuse of power and the fight of a small band of decent people trying to overcome the big guys. With a side order of intelligent humour. I had a hard time putting it down in the last two days.