Slashdot Mirror

Albert Schueller writes "Lulu is a place where authors can self-publish their books. It's a nice response to exorbitant college textbook prices. In an interesting twist, looks like you might be able to get away with selling other people's books on Lulu and reap a tidy profit. The Lulu offering Calculus Twirly Exponentials by Dave Stuart appears to be simply a high quality scan of the much more well-known, and expensive, Calculus: Early Transcendentals 6th ed. by James Stewart. Compare the preview images available for each at Lulu and Amazon respectively."

Albert Schueller writes "Lulu is a place where authors can self-publish their books. It's a nice response to exorbitant college textbook prices. In an interesting twist, looks like you might be able to get away with selling other people's books on Lulu and reap a tidy profit. The Lulu offering Calculus Twirly Exponentials by Dave Stuart appears to be simply a high quality scan of the much more well-known, and expensive, Calculus: Early Transcendentals 6th ed. by James Stewart. Compare the preview images available for each at Lulu and Amazon respectively."

An anonymous reader writes "Print-on-demand publisher Lulu recently announced that they're offering 'eBooks.' Since they've always offered downloadable books as PDFs, that takes some decoding to figure out what part is new: it turns out that it means now they're handling more formats, they've significantly increased the share they take out of the purchase price ... and for an additional fee, they now offer DRM. I have a few items published through Lulu myself; nothing forces me to buy the DRM, but I'm considering taking my business elsewhere on principle. This isn't what I expected from the people who, when I first signed up with them, were solidly endorsing Creative Commons."

Occamboy writes "I wrote a slightly successful (30,000+ copies sold) computer communications textbook a number of years back that was published via the traditional textbook publishing route. The royalties were nice, but, frankly, the bigger money came from the boost in my professional standing (I'm a practicing engineer, not a professor). I also felt bad when the publisher hiked the price dramatically every year because students were stuck once a professor adopted a text — $50 for a smallish paperback seemed very high (although I like to think what they learned was worth it!). I'm thinking of writing another textbook, this time about the practice of software engineering in critical systems, using the experience I've gained in the decades I've spent developing, and managing the development of, software-driven medical devices. Poking around on the Net, I've found several intriguing options for distributing open source texts, such as Flatworld Knowledge, Lulu, and Connexions. This concept of free or inexpensive texts intrigues me — the easy adoption and lack of price-gouging. Do any Slashdotters have experience with this new paradigm? Any suggestions or experiences to share from authors, students, and/or professors, who've written, read, or adopted open source or low-cost texts from any source?"

Jason Scott writes "As someone who is bathed in Bulletin Board System (BBS) history nearly every waking hour, I can sometimes feel like I'm the only one going completely out of his way to find narratives. It's easy enough to copy together a bunch of floppy disks or scan a bunch of printouts but that's not really the glue of what put the online world together and why it still holds a strong meaning for people who were there. As a result, I'm always seeking out people to tell their stories from a personal perspective, or at least take a good shot at putting together the human side of the whole BBS era for the sake of those who missed it. If I'm lucky, I stumble upon a few sites where people do a great job of cobbling together what they didn't throw out from their teenage years. I might even find an extended story out on a website, spanning multiple pages." Read the rest of Jason's review. COMMODORK: Sordid Tales from a BBS Junkie author Rob O'Hara pages 167 publisher Lulu.com rating 8 reviewer Jason Scott ISBN 978-1-84728-582-9 summary A memoir of one young teenager's life in the BBS world in the 1980s

With Rob O'Hara's book Commodork: Sordid Tales from a BBS Junkie, I believe we have the world's first BBS Memoir. Weighing in at around 160 pages, O'Hara covers his life from 1977 through to 2002, tracing the effect that Bulletin Boards, videogames, and computers have had on his life. Just 33 years old, it might seem strange for someone to write an autobiographical narrative so soon, but like a lot of youth who've grown up in the age of the home computer, O'Hara's gotten a lot of living done in that short time.

This is a self-published book, or more accurately, an author-controlled book. It is currently distributed by Lulu.com, an on-demand printer that provides you with a very "book"-looking book that you would be hard-pressed to think didn't come right off the shelves of the local chain bookstore. The only difference is there's no professional editor jamming through the work before it gets to you. It's easy to find flaws in a lack of slickness and flow in a self-published book, but also no real filtering out of "the good stuff", either. So I think of this book as a real sweet homebrew creation, rough-hewn but full of heart, not unlike the boards it talks about.

Because of this, the first few dozen pages are choppy. O'Hara works his way around his memories to find his voice: He tries to explain what it is that drives a person to still keep a pile of Commodore 64s in his garage, or build a 20-machine arcade in his back yard (the author includes a picture of this great-looking playroom), or even to want to talk about this history in the first place. He covers it from different angles: the urge to be a collector, the nostalgic dad remembering his carefree days, and the computer guy with the cred built up from now-decades of experience with the machines. He also struggles, initially, with who the book is for: folks completely unaware of the history of the BBS and home computers of the 1980s, or other 30 and up computer geeks who want to take a joyride through a shared childhood? In doing so, he actually touches on some great thoughts on what attracts people to old pieces of plastic and microchips, and why things were so different for him.

A sixth of the way in, O'Hara dispenses with the helping hand, cracks his knuckles, and goes in whole hog. Instead of asking if anyone gets it, he assumes you've gotten this far because you want to know it, jams the wayback machine into full throttle, and plunges into the world of BBSing for a teenager in Oklahoma. Except, of course, it's really every BBS kid's childhood: The little bargains, the quiet victories, the betrayals, the triumphs.

The heart and soul of the book actually are warez. Warez in the old sense, of newly-acquired one-off floppies of games, painstaking bargained for, traded, and spread out to gain fame and reputation. Throughout the book, it comes back to the warez, and O'Hara does an absolutely fantastic job of capturing the sense of power and expression that engulfs a teenager who has been able to use his skills or his patience to get his hand on a program that nobody else has and then turn around and use that slight lead to his advantage. The methods he uses are laid out in brilliant detail; one involves registering with bulletin boards in a city his family will be vacationing in shortly, allowing his far away "exotic" location to be verified by the system operator, and then traveling to that city and leeching them dry for a free local call.

O'Hara never lets it get dry and technical; it's about people he met while trading software, the kind of people who he partied with, got into fights with, or loved. He's not always nice and he's not always the hero; what really rings true is how none of it feels pumped up or faked, dressed up as some inherently soul-searching activity where every moment in bristling with poignant meaning. That said, some of it rings very close to the heart indeed.

In fact, this book's greatest effect may be the touchstone it provides for one's own experiences. Even as Rob's younger self is getting drunk at a BBS party and stumbling in panic from a perceived bust into the flatbed of a parked truck to sleep it off, I'm harkening back in my own mind to events that accompanied my BBSing that I'd forgotten wholly and totally. But I was there again, saving my own warez for the right moment, meeting my own soon-to-be-lifelong friends, making my own grievous mistakes. Anyone who used BBSes for any period of time will want to run to their keyboards and tell their own story; I see a lot of long e-mails in Mr. O'Hara's future.

One small disclaimer: On page 14 of the edition of the book I have, Rob mentions my BBS Documentary, but just to say it's not what he was aiming for with his book. And he's right; we don't step in each other's territory and his book does what my film couldn't; go front to end on one boy's story to turning into a man online. And for that, I thank him, and I think a lot of others will too.

Is it for everyone? No way, but a book that takes on its subject so intensely shouldn't be. If you or an older sibling or parent touched a plastic-and-metal home computer, sipped your bandwidth through a modem, or held a 5 1/4" floppy disk in your bag to give to someone else, this book is your book. It might even be your memories, too.

It's a good book and can be ordered through Lulu or directly from the author, who sells autographed copies.

Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

vile8 writes "Bob Young, co-founder of Red Hat Software, is in the NY Times this morning covering a new co-operative business plan for viral video makers. Just like his Self-publishing site Lulu, the new plan provides 80% of the revenues back to the creators. It is based on something quite common, Co-ops. In this plan, if there were 5000 users at 14.95 each there would be 59,800 that would get divvied up among those that brought traffic to the site. The 'pro' users also get larger upload space, and longer cam captures. Other unique features of the site are the podcast generation per author, author vlog pages, and open-source-specific OGM video format conversions."

vile8 writes "Bob Young, co-founder of Red Hat Software, is in the NY Times this morning covering a new co-operative business plan for viral video makers. Just like his Self-publishing site Lulu, the new plan provides 80% of the revenues back to the creators. It is based on something quite common, Co-ops. In this plan, if there were 5000 users at 14.95 each there would be 59,800 that would get divvied up among those that brought traffic to the site. The 'pro' users also get larger upload space, and longer cam captures. Other unique features of the site are the podcast generation per author, author vlog pages, and open-source-specific OGM video format conversions."

A reader writes:"The Official Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu 6.06 Desktop Guides, the Official Ubuntu Server 6.06 Guide and the Official Ubuntu Packaging Guide are all now available in print from on-line publisher Lulu. The best part? All of these guide are cheap, in fact the only cost is that of manufacture and shipping, both Canonical and Lulu do not make any profit on the books at all. The Official Ubuntu Desktop Guide for example only costs $6.49 plus postage and contains 98 pages in total. Free downloadable PDF files are available for download on the Ubuntu Documentation Project Lulu website as well as on-line copies at http://help.ubuntu.com. All of the guides are available in many different languages thanks to the Ubuntu Translation Teams. Currently there are about 10 different languages available, more translations will be added to the store as they are compleated in Canonical's on-line project management web site Launchpad. All the guides are dual licenced under the GFDL and Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licences. This is a really good idea to give Linux users cheap and reliable printed Linux manuals. Lets hope other distributions follow Ubuntu's lead on this one, some of the Gentoo manuals for example available in print this cheap would be really great to see."

A reader writes:"The Official Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu 6.06 Desktop Guides, the Official Ubuntu Server 6.06 Guide and the Official Ubuntu Packaging Guide are all now available in print from on-line publisher Lulu. The best part? All of these guide are cheap, in fact the only cost is that of manufacture and shipping, both Canonical and Lulu do not make any profit on the books at all. The Official Ubuntu Desktop Guide for example only costs $6.49 plus postage and contains 98 pages in total. Free downloadable PDF files are available for download on the Ubuntu Documentation Project Lulu website as well as on-line copies at http://help.ubuntu.com. All of the guides are available in many different languages thanks to the Ubuntu Translation Teams. Currently there are about 10 different languages available, more translations will be added to the store as they are compleated in Canonical's on-line project management web site Launchpad. All the guides are dual licenced under the GFDL and Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licences. This is a really good idea to give Linux users cheap and reliable printed Linux manuals. Lets hope other distributions follow Ubuntu's lead on this one, some of the Gentoo manuals for example available in print this cheap would be really great to see."

A reader writes:"The Official Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu 6.06 Desktop Guides, the Official Ubuntu Server 6.06 Guide and the Official Ubuntu Packaging Guide are all now available in print from on-line publisher Lulu. The best part? All of these guide are cheap, in fact the only cost is that of manufacture and shipping, both Canonical and Lulu do not make any profit on the books at all. The Official Ubuntu Desktop Guide for example only costs $6.49 plus postage and contains 98 pages in total. Free downloadable PDF files are available for download on the Ubuntu Documentation Project Lulu website as well as on-line copies at http://help.ubuntu.com. All of the guides are available in many different languages thanks to the Ubuntu Translation Teams. Currently there are about 10 different languages available, more translations will be added to the store as they are compleated in Canonical's on-line project management web site Launchpad. All the guides are dual licenced under the GFDL and Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licences. This is a really good idea to give Linux users cheap and reliable printed Linux manuals. Lets hope other distributions follow Ubuntu's lead on this one, some of the Gentoo manuals for example available in print this cheap would be really great to see."

A reader writes:"The Official Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu 6.06 Desktop Guides, the Official Ubuntu Server 6.06 Guide and the Official Ubuntu Packaging Guide are all now available in print from on-line publisher Lulu. The best part? All of these guide are cheap, in fact the only cost is that of manufacture and shipping, both Canonical and Lulu do not make any profit on the books at all. The Official Ubuntu Desktop Guide for example only costs $6.49 plus postage and contains 98 pages in total. Free downloadable PDF files are available for download on the Ubuntu Documentation Project Lulu website as well as on-line copies at http://help.ubuntu.com. All of the guides are available in many different languages thanks to the Ubuntu Translation Teams. Currently there are about 10 different languages available, more translations will be added to the store as they are compleated in Canonical's on-line project management web site Launchpad. All the guides are dual licenced under the GFDL and Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licences. This is a really good idea to give Linux users cheap and reliable printed Linux manuals. Lets hope other distributions follow Ubuntu's lead on this one, some of the Gentoo manuals for example available in print this cheap would be really great to see."

A reader writes:"The Official Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu 6.06 Desktop Guides, the Official Ubuntu Server 6.06 Guide and the Official Ubuntu Packaging Guide are all now available in print from on-line publisher Lulu. The best part? All of these guide are cheap, in fact the only cost is that of manufacture and shipping, both Canonical and Lulu do not make any profit on the books at all. The Official Ubuntu Desktop Guide for example only costs $6.49 plus postage and contains 98 pages in total. Free downloadable PDF files are available for download on the Ubuntu Documentation Project Lulu website as well as on-line copies at http://help.ubuntu.com. All of the guides are available in many different languages thanks to the Ubuntu Translation Teams. Currently there are about 10 different languages available, more translations will be added to the store as they are compleated in Canonical's on-line project management web site Launchpad. All the guides are dual licenced under the GFDL and Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licences. This is a really good idea to give Linux users cheap and reliable printed Linux manuals. Lets hope other distributions follow Ubuntu's lead on this one, some of the Gentoo manuals for example available in print this cheap would be really great to see."

A reader writes:"The Official Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu 6.06 Desktop Guides, the Official Ubuntu Server 6.06 Guide and the Official Ubuntu Packaging Guide are all now available in print from on-line publisher Lulu. The best part? All of these guide are cheap, in fact the only cost is that of manufacture and shipping, both Canonical and Lulu do not make any profit on the books at all. The Official Ubuntu Desktop Guide for example only costs $6.49 plus postage and contains 98 pages in total. Free downloadable PDF files are available for download on the Ubuntu Documentation Project Lulu website as well as on-line copies at http://help.ubuntu.com. All of the guides are available in many different languages thanks to the Ubuntu Translation Teams. Currently there are about 10 different languages available, more translations will be added to the store as they are compleated in Canonical's on-line project management web site Launchpad. All the guides are dual licenced under the GFDL and Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licences. This is a really good idea to give Linux users cheap and reliable printed Linux manuals. Lets hope other distributions follow Ubuntu's lead on this one, some of the Gentoo manuals for example available in print this cheap would be really great to see."

deeptrace writes "A group of SF writers all submitted purposely awful stories to a publisher that purported to publish only selected high quality works. They created the worst story they could come up with, and it was accepted for publication." Their press release is pretty funny -- and if you'd like a sample of their insane prose, it's available through the book's Lulu site. (Where, Yes, you could also buy the whole thing.)

Aeonite (Michael Fiegel) writes "Mark Jeffrey is probably best known to Slashdotters as an online media entrepreneur and one of the co-founders (along with Mike Maerz and Jim Bumgardner) of The Palace, an avatar-based chat system popular in the late 1990s. Jeffrey is not to be confused with Neal Stephenson, though both men have websites featuring clockwork imagery, goatees, and novels which contain references to Sumerian mythology -- Stephenson's Snow Crash and Jeffrey's first novel, The Pocket and the Pendant. From a distance, one might be inclined to believe that similarities to Stephenson's own work are more than cosmetic: Jeffrey thanks Stephenson on the Acknowledgments page of his novel (along with Stephen R. Donaldson and Carl Jung, among others), and one Lulu.com review (mentioned in a press release) describes The Pocket and the Pendant as being 'like Stargate, Harry Potter, Snow Crash and the old Land of the Lost rolled into one.'" Read on for the rest of Fiegel's review. The Pocket and the Pendant author Mark Jeffrey pages 220 publisher Lulu.com rating 5 reviewer Michael Fiegel ISBN 1411613236 summary In a world where time has no meaning, one boy stands alone against the forces of darkness.

In my estimation, that's a lot like saying that chocolate chip cookies are "like flour, sugar, chocolate chips and vanilla rolled into one." Both statements are true, in part, though they leave out a lot of other ingredients, and mention some (Snow Crash and vanilla, respectively) which proportionally make up very little of the overall batter.

Granted, I know what the reviewer was thinking of when they wrote that assessment of the book; namely, the Sumerian myth. But beyond that, it's misleading to suggest that a Snow Crash fan would also enjoy The Pocket and the Pendant. I'd go so far as to say quite the opposite. Snow Crash was a Cyberpunk novel loaded with heavy doses of socio-political and religious satire, violence and sexual imagery, among other things. The Pocket and the Pendant is a fantasy novel that contains no overt satire, little violence outside of a few bruises, and nothing sexier than the word "girlfriend." To draw comparison between the two is akin to comparing Star Trek and Star Wars: about all they have in common is stars. One is science-fiction, the other's science-fantasy; one takes place in the future, the other "long, long ago"; one's got Wil Wheaton, the other's got Natalie Portman; one's designed for adults (Seven of Nine, the Borg), and one's focused on a younger audience (Jar-Jar Binks, the Ewoks).

Given that dichotomy, The Pocket and the Pendant falls squarely in the Star Wars/fantasy half of the speculative fiction genre. As a longtime fan of Star Wars, I can't say that's a bad thing. There's much that's good about this book, and as a first novel it shines far brighter than many works I've laid eyes on. However, there are some uneven spots that must be acknowledged along the way.

Humble Beginnings

After a brief prelude which sets up the action to follow we are introduced to the novel's protagonist, Max Quick. Max is introduced as being "a very strange little boy," a phrase that bothered me the first time I read it. As we will learn just a few dozen words later, Max is twelve years old, as are his peers, who are also, time and again, referred to as "little boys and girls." When I think of someone who's a "little boy" I think of the teenage Amidala in The Phantom Menace calling the 8-year-old Anakin "a funny little boy." I do not think of twelve-year-olds as "little children," but rather as pre-teens well on the way to adulthood: Natalie Portman's Matilda in Leon, who is twelve going on 32; Nabokov's twelve-year old Lolita, four-feet-ten in one sock; the drug-using pre-teens and barely-teens in Kids and Thirteen.

In the world of The Pocket and the Pendant, however, twelve-year-olds truly are "little boys and girls," possessed of a wide-eyed innocence that, while capable of being tainted and turned, is nevertheless omnipresent in the mannerisms and language of the main characters. Mention of "girlfriends" causes blushing, and one twelve-year-old character uses the term "tummy" and repeatedly refers to her mother as "Mommy." Consider the following dialogue:

" Can you hear me?"
"Yes!" came the little girl's voice from somewhere above, now sounding more hopeful. "Oh, yes! Whoever you are, can you help me, please?"
"Yes, I will, I promise," Max called back. "What apartment are you in?"
"912," she yelled back, "The door's open! Hurry! I'm scared!"

The only child in the book who's portrayed as truly malicious and evil is Ace, described as a "big kid" by the author in a clear effort to put at least several years between him and the "little twelve-year-olds." While it's true that there are some young antagonists who have reverted to barbarity, even their actions seem more like a foolish game than true maliciousness, bringing to mind scenes from Lord of the Flies or Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome or even Peter Pan, kids turned savage not by choice, but by circumstance. Sasha, one of the most vicious-tongued of these savage "Serpents & Mermaids," even joins the other "good little children" on their quest after a time.

In all, there are four heroes in the novel, all presumably in the same age range, all "just four little kids" as described by our hero, Max Quick, himself. He's accompanied by Casey Cole, his female sidekick (and not his girlfriend, as he insists); Ian Keating, a British transplant, here playing the role of Spock to Quick's Kirk; and, of course, Sasha, who comes in late and serves mostly as a plot device, conveniently tripping or falling into trouble when necessary. As to the plot ...

All The Time In The World

The action begins for our heroes as it ends for everyone else on the planet: on April 9th at 3:38, in the middle of a solar eclipse. That's the moment at which time itself stops. Mothers are frozen in the middle of making breakfast, fathers are paralyzed as they drive to work, and children are stuck fast as they head home not to play GTA San Andreas, but to eat lemon and jelly sandwiches and play hide-and-seek (for such is the world of Max Quick). In fact, it's not just people who are affected, but presumably the entire universe itself: the wind stops blowing, flocks of birds halt in mid-flight, and waves become frozen on the ocean, each immobile and essentially as hard as stone.

As it turns out, not everyone is stuck in time. There's Max, of course, who quickly discovers that while the rest of the world is stopped, he has gained respectively supernatural powers, able to "whoosh" about with great speed and hear across great distances since everything else in the world has fallen silent and still. He soon rescues Casey, who has discovered two powers: first, the ability to "fall inside" mirrors in order to escape from danger; and second, the ability to rub objects to "heat them up" and unfreeze them from time. This discovery leads to one of the more unintentionally amusing lines in the book if you're an adult:

Everything seems to be like that: slow and sticky -- but I figured it out: if you rub it and heat it up, it comes loose and then you can use it." She beamed.

The unwitting double-entendre there makes me question the assessment that The Pocket and the Pendant is "a fast-paced adventure sure to thrill young and old alike." Clearly, the author intends this line to be read from the perspective of an innocent child, discovering a secret and describing it in perfectly obvious and appropriate terms, but I think it is likely that only a child (or "young adult," as the library likes to call them) will be able to take that at face value. But on with the story...

Max and Sasha, in an attempt to uncover the mystery behind the stopped time, soon encounter a rogue band of youth gone wild, which leads to a very clever battle set inside a time-stopped bank of fog, and the eventual capture of our heroes. Luckily, they discover a disgruntled member of the gang (Ian) who is able to help them escape via a magical book-cum-"deus-ex-machina". At first, it seems strange that the novel interjects a magical tome into what had previously been a more science-oriented storyline, and stranger still that the characters all seem to just accept this magical object at face value. But as the plot unfolds, this becomes more acceptable to the reader; as we discover, not only is there a reason for magic and science to exist side-by-side within the story, but there's a reason why the main character seems capable of embracing it all without questioning it.

As the story evolves, we encounter more quantum-bending books, a Nam-shub (Sumerian incantation), UFOs, an entire army of alien centurions, and an insidious plot that involves a rogue planet, ancient Egyptian and Sumerian "gods" and the interference of Snow Crash's favorite god, Enki, one of the novel's most interesting characters despite the fact that he (and, perhaps, the author) seems to believe that all the world's problems can be solved by giving troubled children a bowl of ice cream (this happens three times in the course of the novel).

Enki gets some of the more interesting (and some of the more adult) dialogue in the novel, though I hesitate to use the term "dialogue" since it's mostly "monologue." Enki is not alone, however. Heroes, villains, diary entries and side characters all spout off great gouts of plot for pages and pages, at times explaining backstory, at other times (as with Enki) seeming to speak the author's own philosophical beliefs as they attempt to justify thousands of years of history, archaeology, religion and philosophy in one neat little storyline. One entire chapter is devoted to Enki's reconciliation of Sumerian mythology and Biblical references to Adam, the Nephilim, the Flood, Babel and the Serpent in the Garden of Eden. Not that it's done poorly here; on the contrary, it's done as tidily as Stephenson does in Snow Crash (which is to say, solidly enough to serve the plot, but probably not enough to stand up to actual scrutiny in the "real world"). Surely the RIAA would disagree, however, with Ian's concise assessment that good and evil are akin to users who share on P2P networks, and those who do not (respectively).

The Pocket and the Pendant

As Enki explains to our heroes, "The Pocket" of the title is the little "pocket of time" within which the characters find themselves through the course of the novel. To reveal more about the nature of this "pocket" is to spoil parts of the story, but suffice to say that it goes far deeper than your typical "time has stopped" trope, and involves weaving the concept of neural networks, the nature of consciousness and quantum mechanics into what Enki dubs "Dreamtime."

Various objects called omphalos -- special amethysts, diamonds, rubies, lapis lazuli, emeralds, etc. -- "contain echoes of the very Dreamtime itself", allowing users to alter reality in various ways. Some omphalos are used to allow users to travel faster, others to communicate across great distances. "The Pocket" was created by an omphalos called the Chrononomicon, and "The Pendant" is another omphalos which the novel's villains are searching for within "The Pocket." It has the capability of affecting the entire human race, and whether or not they can be stopped before achieving their goal is ultimately on the shoulders of Max Quick and his three friends. If the heroes succeed, the world will be saved from evil. If they fail, all humankind will be enslaved, just like the band Planet Furious, who are, late in the book, "thawed out" and forced to perform onstage for an army of villains in what has to be one of the silliest scenes in the novel.

Not that there's anything particularly wrong with "silly" in a children's book. Scenes like this are bound to capture the imagination of younger readers. But adult readers are going to have a hard time grasping the relevance of "Johnny Jupiter, Sophisto, Frankie Mercury and Sid Venus" in a novel which, pages earlier, was going on about quantum mechanics and the nature of reality.

Who's The Audience?

This issue is addressed in this review over and over again, precisely because of the author's apparent intent:

"The novel is written for both adults and young adult readers alike," says Jeffrey in a press release about the novel. "I consciously wrote in a fast-paced and humorous style accessible to both audiences, yet didn't want to create something 'kiddie'.

All told, before the book is out, we'll have encountered references to ancient Sumeria, Judeo-Christian mythology, quantum physics, time travel and astronomy -- heavy, weighty topics that will probably fly over the heads of many children reading the book. We'll also have encountered children calling each other names, characters who speak in "kiddie" language to one another, a "Beep-o-tronik" cell phone and a "Vicious Cycles 'Sportstervarius' motorcycle." These two things -- adult language, and childish language -- exist not together, but side by side, separate and noticeably unequal. Consider the following, from page 180 and 181, respectively:

It was the same kind of feeling one got looking at an Escher print. It was numinous, chthonic.
The gestalt was one of controlled geometric chaos -- triangular, dodecahedral, octagonal and tetrahedral shapes in every direction.

"...I forgive you." She paused a moment and then added, "I even forgive you for what will happen to my Mommy."

The novel certainly has pieces that are appropriate for older readers, and it definitely has pieces that are intended for younger readers, but I am hard pressed to say that it can appeal as a whole to either group. Due to the nature of the story and the fact that the protagonists are children, my gut instinct is to suggest it's definitely a children's book. I can see a child enjoying the book much more easily than I can see an adult finding it all fulfilling. Slashdot is mentioned on page 67, but I don't think the typical Slashdot reader would find the novel really and truly fulfilling. However, their children probably would, especially if mom or dad was there to explain what "numinous" or "chthonic" meant.

This is not to say that adults cannot enjoy such novels. Many a children's novel has been embraced by adults: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, A Wrinkle In Time and The Hobbit spring immediately to mind, and of course there's the ubiquitous Harry Potter and much of Piers Anthony's work, especially the oft-forgotten Mode books. Such novels contain worlds where youthful innocence is threatened on the path toward experience, and children (or hobbits) are forced to grow up faster than they might like in order to save themselves and others. The Pocket and the Pendant is at home with these books, not with Stargate or Snow Crash. And that's good company to be in.

Nuts & Bolts

It's worth mentioning the book's layout, at least in passing. The number of lines varies from page-to-page, with some pages leaving a more comfortable 1/8" white gap above the rule at the bottom, and others cramming an extra line in there, seemingly at random, but likely due to the somewhat inconsistent spacing between sections within each chapter, some of which are quite wide, others narrower. Rather than being fully-justified (with even edges on both sides), the book is merely left-justified, with ragged right edges. While not a mortal sin, it's at least venial, making the text hard to read in some places where words sorely in need of hyphenation are instead dropped to a new line:

For his part, Max was surprised to find that there was something disturbingly
familiar about Mr. Siren also. Then, Max caught a flash, a snippet
of...something. He blinked in confusion and tried to concentrate.

From a stylistic standpoint, one annoyance is that the novel's main villain has a habit of speaking in pseudo-archaic English, with "thee," "thou" and "thy" peppering her speech, presumably in an effort to make her seem older and more alien. While I would normally consider this as egregious a sin as George Lucas burdening Jar-Jar Binks with Jamaican patois, I will let Jeffrey off the hook here since he has one of the characters question this very issue late in the novel, in a rather amusing scene.

Far worse, however is the author's unfortunate habit of liberally sprinkling his text with italics for emphasis. I cannot find a single page in the book that does not contain at least one or two italicized words. In general, one uses italics as a means of emphasis only sparingly, and the overuse in this novel leaves the reader a bit seasick, riding a roller-coaster of emphasized words up and down, up and down. Much of the time, one can chalk this up to the gushing exuberance of an excited speaker, but at times, such emphasis seems wholly out of place within the context of a given sentence:

Oh, it is you, I knew it was," she said, shaking her head. "But how can it be? I don't understand ... but I have no doubt: it's you alright."

Overall the book is well-edited, with only a handful of typos to be found throughout. One of the most amusing, repeated twice, is to be found on page 201 near the end of the novel, where a character unfortunately serves ice cream not in "bowls" but in "bowels." That's one your kids might actually notice, and laugh uproariously at.

Unintentional potty humor -- some things are funny no matter how old you are.

In Closing

For those who enjoy many of the other books mentioned above, The Pocket and the Pendant is a good, fun read. However, it's hard to get past the notable imbalance between the book's "adult" and "kiddie" elements. It will be interesting to see where the author takes his characters should he write a sequel to this novel, and if he's able to more thoroughly blend the weightier language with a consistently child-friendly storyline.

The best advice for those who are unsure of whether or not this is for them is to check it out themselves. A free preview of this novel, including the first two chapters, is available in .pdf format for immediate download from print-on-demand-publisher Lulu.com and www.pocketandpendant.com. The P&P website also includes cover art, news and updates about the book, a blog, and several other reviews.

You can purchase the Pocket and the Pendant from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Lulu has announced a new program of creating boxed sets around particular technologies. They've got Fedora Core 3, OpenOffice, Bugzilla, as well our little Slashcode . The boxes include documentation and the code on CD with the money going back to support the communities building it. Lulu also does a whole bunch of cool stuff around self-publishing for on-demand items.

Lulu has announced a new program of creating boxed sets around particular technologies. They've got Fedora Core 3, OpenOffice, Bugzilla, as well our little Slashcode . The boxes include documentation and the code on CD with the money going back to support the communities building it. Lulu also does a whole bunch of cool stuff around self-publishing for on-demand items.

Lulu has announced a new program of creating boxed sets around particular technologies. They've got Fedora Core 3, OpenOffice, Bugzilla, as well our little Slashcode . The boxes include documentation and the code on CD with the money going back to support the communities building it. Lulu also does a whole bunch of cool stuff around self-publishing for on-demand items.

Lulu has announced a new program of creating boxed sets around particular technologies. They've got Fedora Core 3, OpenOffice, Bugzilla, as well our little Slashcode . The boxes include documentation and the code on CD with the money going back to support the communities building it. Lulu also does a whole bunch of cool stuff around self-publishing for on-demand items.

Lulu has announced a new program of creating boxed sets around particular technologies. They've got Fedora Core 3, OpenOffice, Bugzilla, as well our little Slashcode . The boxes include documentation and the code on CD with the money going back to support the communities building it. Lulu also does a whole bunch of cool stuff around self-publishing for on-demand items.

Lulu has announced a new program of creating boxed sets around particular technologies. They've got Fedora Core 3, OpenOffice, Bugzilla, as well our little Slashcode . The boxes include documentation and the code on CD with the money going back to support the communities building it. Lulu also does a whole bunch of cool stuff around self-publishing for on-demand items.

Lulu has announced a new program of creating boxed sets around particular technologies. They've got Fedora Core 3, OpenOffice, Bugzilla, as well our little Slashcode . The boxes include documentation and the code on CD with the money going back to support the communities building it. Lulu also does a whole bunch of cool stuff around self-publishing for on-demand items.

yootje writes "ZDnet is running a story about a professor who made his own Cisco networking textbook, with 800 pages: "Computing instructor Matt Basham's suggestions for improving Cisco Systems' official training manuals fell on deaf ears for years. But he appears to have the networking giant's attention now." The professor made his book available for free on his website."

Oskie-wee-wee writes "Infoworld is carrying a story about Bob Young (Red Hat, Lulu, Classy Formal Wear, Hamilton Tiger-Cats, etc.) and his open letter to SCO and Darl McBride - in response to Darl's open letter 'defending, in one breath, the SCO suit, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and the Supreme Court Decision in the Eldred vs. Ashcroft case.'"

Oskie-wee-wee writes "Infoworld is carrying a story about Bob Young (Red Hat, Lulu, Classy Formal Wear, Hamilton Tiger-Cats, etc.) and his open letter to SCO and Darl McBride - in response to Darl's open letter 'defending, in one breath, the SCO suit, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and the Supreme Court Decision in the Eldred vs. Ashcroft case.'"