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Evil Geniuses In A Nutshell
What's to Like? When he's on, he's really on. Some of the strips in here are laugh-out-loud funny. Even when it's merely amusing, Illiad captures elements of the real world in their twisted glories. Who can't put real names to half of the personalities running around in his little experiment?
There's Mike, a network engineer, forced to choose a server OS based on mascot issues. AJ, the designer, is torn between his feelings for Miranda and his inability to relate to anything organic -- when he's not debating a caffeine-induced hallucination. Greg, head of tech support, can't believe his customers questions. Pitr, coder extraodinaire, eagerly awaits his recognition as an Evil Genius. Stef, marketing weenie, is haunted by his poor Quake performance and his inability to make any progress with Miranda. Miranda, equal parts geek and goddess, finds herself the equal of the male techs, but cannot quite understand their unique brand of communication. On the far side of reality are the Dust Puppy (an intelligent, innocent, and adorable ball of that stuff you ought to clean out of your server -- but with feet) and Erwin, an AI who's switched bodies more than Cher.
On his best days, Illiad reads like a combination of Doonesbury and Bloom County, with the requisite Open Source flavor. Linux usually comes out ahead and Microsoft way behind, though occasionally the situation's reversed. (Insert photo of Alan Cox reeling from sunlight after the MS Terminator steals his sunglasses). That's not to say that sacred penguins don't make good hamburger. (Once the boss approves migrating the servers to Linux, what do you do? Answer -- Nerf Gun duels to determine whose pet distribution is best.)
What's to Consider? As UFies know, Illiad's Sunday comics are often topical. Remember eBay's spate of availability problems? ESR at Microsoft last summer? If so, you'll catch on pretty quickly. If not, you'll just have to scratch your head and keep reading. (There's also one comic missing the last panel on the top of page 18. If you're reading this, though, you'll find the proper punchline here.) For the purists, note that some strips appear in topic-related sections, not chronological order. That serves to bring out more of the subtle humor, in my opinion.
Also, Illiad's song parodies provoke mixed reactions. A lyricist, he's not, though his Gap parody hits squarely between the eyes. Illiad's better at the episodic stuff -- see his Star Wars storyline from the last book, or the strange tale of the One True Ping. Thankfully, the all-singing, all-dancing shorts are kept to a minimum.
The Summary A potent mixture of wry social commentary, high technology, cynicism that bites back, and a good dose of innocence that really does win out in the end, if you can put this book down for very long, you're either playing Quake or utterly humorless. Submit to your inner Evil Genius, and let the rest of the world wonder why you're grinning so much. (And if you're really evil, you won't loan out your copy.)Purchase this book at ThinkGeek.
Table of Contents- Preface -- Eric S. Raymond
- Introduction -- Illiad
- The Comics
The (Note to IDG lawyers : fictional) character Pitr is often found reading a (Note to IDG lawyers : also fictional) book called 'Evil Geniuses for Dummies'. As we all know a certain publisher is (Note to IDG lawyers : allegedly) insanely protective of the name of a particular series of books bearing that series title. But since nice friendly O'Reilly are publishing this, they can use the title of an equally well-known range of computer books... their own Nutshell series.
And everyone knows (Note to IDG lawyers : in my opinion) how much more informative Nutshell books are than the 'For Dummies' series anyway...
Pax,
White Rabbit +++ Divide by Cucumber Error ++
free experimental electronic music netlabel at www.viablehybrid.com
I don't want to knock the book at all, but have no compunctions about lambasting this review ;-)
My [non-techie] wife found it amusing, which is unusual for geek humour. I liked it, but since I check User Friendly almost daily, I didn't see anything I hadn't seen before.
Correction: there is a new joke in the book, and it is the book. This is an O'Reilly "In a Nutshell" book, right down to the Colophon: "The animal on the cover is a Dust Puppy". I can't help but think that if IDG weren't such assholes about their trademarks, this could just as well have been "Evil Geniuses for Dummies".
Thanks to the reviewer for pointing out the missing text in the Windows refund storyline. I didn't get it, and didn't think to check the website to see if the print version was accurate.
Isn't it Mike who is haunted by the giant cola can? The reviewer says it's AJ, but I'm pretty sure it's not.
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