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Acts Of The Apostles
Rob noticed this guy at April's Geek Pride Festival in Boston. The guy in question was obviously trying to reach Rob and talk to him, but was having a hard time getting there. (CT:I think John and I suffer from the same problem: We're both pretty shy, and this was a really crowded place) When he did finally reach Rob, he gave him the book, asking him to read it -- or pass it on to me for reading.
That's very similar to the opening of the book, in which the book's protagonist has a computer disk dumped into his world, after enduring some interesting testing times. From there, the thriller develops ranging the world, encompassing favorites like nanotechnology gone bad, mind control, multinational corporate intrigue, computer chip design, seances, and running from the law.
The book is purportedly about Gulf War Syndrome and its causes, but that's only the starting point: The plot itself is believable, for a thriller. I've described it to friends as "What Tom Clancy would write if he were smart." The plot devices, the characters and topics are all very familiar to the geek audience, and it's quite refreshing to read a book that understands the mindset its audience will have.
There a few drawbacks to the book -- as the author's bio states, this is Sundman's first book, and that is readily apparent. While it's well written, there are sections of the book that feel stilted and artificial, and portions of the dialogue feel unnatural. But in light of it being a first novel, I think these are forgivable. Lastly, the story line suffers from some too-familar devices, including the overused theme of an evil multinational corporation as bogeyman.
I salute the publisher and author for their decision to put the first 13 chapters online. Acts of the Apostles comprises 7 "books" with 62 total chapters, so the online chapters give you a very good feeling for the book. I will also say that the writing and story get better as the plot unfolds, something worth keeping in mind while reading the initial section of the book. One of the more amusing parts of the book's Web site is the section regarding John's travels. I would imagine he's quite a guy.
Summary: Good book. It's easy to pick up after being away from for a while, but good enough that you'll want to read it straight through. Support small publishing and purchase this book from fatbrain. With summer coming up, and a bit more free time, this is a good book to keep around to read during kernel compiles.
You can also grab the book from Softpro.
-cwk.
Whatever you do don't put "cdidisc" in for the discount code or whatever they call it that would be wrong because you don't work for http://www.cdicorp.com so don't do that it will get you free shipping and stuff but that would be wrong.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
If I don't find it easier to read do I have to... I don't know, give it back?!
*Nick
I don't understand the fuss the reviewer makes about web-available sample chapters. Baen Books has been doing that for over a year now. In fact, Jim Baen has gone even farther with what he calls "Webscriptions." For $10/month, you can download full, copy-edited HTML copies of what he's publishing that month. That works out to $2.50 a novel, which is *CHEAP*. I've been stuffing the HTML into my Palm Vx and carrying them around to read.
As an ex-Navy surgical technologist who served onboard a ship off the coast of Mogadishu, Somalia, about 5 years ago, I disagree with your statements.
Since that was in 1994, many of the men (there were two women pilots onboard, but otherwise it was exclusively male) were stationed in the Middle East for Desert Storm. Part of our daily routine was to operate a "lumps and bumps" clinic, where we operated on and removed various lipomas, sebacious cysts, etc. on sailors and Marines who wanted to be rid of them. While I don't have any official numbers, we typically did 2 or 3 of those per day. I would say, over the 6-month duration of the "cruise", that we performed roughly 150 benign mass excisions.
Now, think about the math on that one. There were approximately 2400 men onboard the ship, and we performed surgery on about 16% of them. That means that during that one particular 6-month period, 16% of the otherwise healthy men of an average age of, say, 22, had growths that bothered them to the point that they wanted them removed.
Look around your class/office/hangouts. How many of your 22-year-old friends have had surgery in the last 6 months? A full one-sixth of them? Personally, I feel that the numbers would be pretty statistically significant. I don't have any hard numbers to compare the number of surgeries on Desert Storm personnel versus those who weren't there, and can't compare that to the percentages in the general population of the ship, but don't you find that a little strange? I do.
Flame away, but as someone who spent a bit of time living and working with Gulf War veterans, I firmly believe that there's more to the story than the government is telling us.